Hyundai Creta races past 600,000 sales in India 

Hyundai Motor India has achieved another sales milestone for its popular SUV – the Creta. The Chennai-based carmaker has now sold the Creta to over 600,000 customers since the vehicle was launched in 2015. The company currently retails the Creta in 1.5-litre petrol, 1.5-litre diesel and a 1.4-litre turbocharged petrol engine options.

The last 100,000 unit sales have come in just eight month, the Creta having crossed the 500,000-unit sales mark in August 2020. It’s a creditable achievement for the country’s best-selling SUV because the past year has been impacted by Covid-induced lockdowns and poor market sentiment.

The latest sales milestone has come in 70 months or a little under six years. As per Autocar Professional’s statistics, a total of 606,743 Cretas have been sold in India since its launch on July 21, 2015 at a starting price of Rs 859,000.

The diesel variant accounts for 399,787 units – or 66% – ‘of total Creta sales while the petrol Creta has been bought by 206,956 buyers, who constitute the remaining 34 percent of sales. The robust demand for the diesel Creta, powered by the 1.5-litre US CRDI, remains undiminished and unlike some carmakers, who have gone slow on diesel power, Hyundai is benefiting from its diesel drive.

Second-gen Creta gives sales a new charge
Surging demand for the new Creta has only furthered what the first-generation Creta achieved. Despite the Covid-induced loss of sales, particularly in the early part of FY2021, the second-generation model, which was launched on March 16, 2020, has logged sales of 139,204 units in the 14 months till April 2021 and remains the best-selling utility vehicle in India.  Rolled out at an introductory price of Rs 999,000, the new Creta is available in five engine-gearbox configurations and five trim levels.

Interestingly, over 20 percent of sales of the new Creta have come from automatic powertrain options: 1.5L MPi Petrol (6MT/ IVT), 1.5L U2 CRDi Diesel (6MT/ 6AT) and the 1.4L Kappa Turbo GDi Petrol (7DCT). Over 51% of India sales are from the higher-spec SX and SX(O) trims and there’s over 60 % sales contribution from the 1.5-litre U2 CRDi BS VI diesel-powered variants.

The impact of the new Creta’s sales is felt on the overall UV segment’s performance in India. In FY2021, the UV segment crossed the million-units sales milestone for the first time – 10,60,750 – and the Creta contributed 120,035 units or 11% total UV sales last fiscal. It maintains the same over the six years since it was launched: of the total 5,219,205 UVs sold in India since FY2016, the Creta contributed 11.62% or 606,743 units.

Over 221,000 Cretas exported
Adding power to the Creta story is the SUV’s export performance. As per Autocar Professonal’s data analytics, a total of 221,626 Cretas have been exported till end-April 2021 (see stat table). It also helped Hyundai regain the No. 1 exporter crown in FY2020 and hold on to the crown in FY2021.